Lentil Soup

Posted on November 9, 2012 by treshabarger

November 9th and the high is predicted to be around 82 degrees. That’s about 15 degrees warmer than normal. It’s going to get cold, sooner or later. When it cools off, I’ll be in the mood for soup again. Here’s a post from my old blog, written in the summer of 2011.

In addition to my new Black Bean Chili Soup recipe, I recently made Lentil Soup from Rip Esselstyn’s Engine 2 Diet book. The real name of the recipe is Savory Lentils and Greens and it is on page 222.

I had the list of ingredients in my shopping app when I was at the grocery store, so when I started making the soup, I had all the ingredients. That’s a good start. Everything was going fine and dandy until it came time to add my leafy green of choice, kale. There wasn’t any room for it in my Dutch oven pot. (Dutch oven pot: is that redundant?) It was just chopped up green stuff but when I took off the lid after the soup had simmered for 45 minutes (or thereabouts), there was no room. In fact, my supposed-to-be soup looked like lentil chili, it was so thick.

The Black Bean Chili recipe called for 3/4 cup of water; it was supposed to be thick. It was in self defense that I ended up using 5 cups of water and making it into soup. This recipe called for 5 cups of water and 5 cups of vegetable broth. I just knew it was going to be soup-y. No? Obviously I’m still having “issues” with soup recipes.

No room in the Dutch oven for the kale? I got out my second Dutch oven and transferred half of the lentil chili into it. To make it soup, I ended up filling up both Dutch ovens with several more cups of water and it was still a little on the thick side. Now I had two 5-quart Dutch ovens full of lentil soup. That’s a lot of soup especially considering I’m the only one at my house interested in it.

Although I had read the recipe correctly and had all the right ingredients, there was one little detail that I had missed before starting this endeavor. The recipe “serves a firehouse of 10.”

Oh.

Well that explains it. When I try a new recipe, I like to make it exactly as written for the first time. I just wasn’t prepared for the quantity. Next time, I’ll try cutting it in half. If I remember, that is, and I probably won’t.

What A Mess!

Posted on July 20, 2012 by treshabarger

What a mess! My kitchen — and hands — that is.

It was Sample Day at Whole Foods Market. (Actually, every day is Sample Day. This is a Good Thing.) I tasted a cherry-almond-vanilla snack/dessert. It was good. I picked up the recipe and found all the ingredients.

Then came the hard part. Quarter and de-pit two pounds of cherries? That took forever and I got cherry juice all over! (Two things: I didn’t read the instructions at the store and I had never made anything with cherries.) That was last Sunday and I still have stained hands and fingernails. Not a pretty sight. I’m not doing this again without a cherry pitter.

Next came mixing the rest of the ingredients in the food processor — that I don’t own. I used to own one but I gave it away after letting it gather dust on my counter for a few years. (See it does happen: you give something away and then a decade or so later, you need it!) I used my blender instead. Ack! Wrong again. Everything got mushed instead of mixed. I was supposed to spread the mixture on top of the cherries. Didn’t happen. I globbed on the mixture and there it sat.

I stained my hands blood red for this?

When I tried to spread it out, I ended up just moving the glob around. Fine. I put the cherry dessert into the frig and then I cleaned up the mess I made.

This is why I think food tastes better when someone else prepares it. I may have to stick to the store samples for my desserts.

Sample Day

Posted on July 16, 2012 by treshabarger

Yesterday I went to Whole Foods Market in southwest Austin. (Love having one on the south side!) I walked in with four items on my list and two grocery bags.

I couldn’t find one of the items on my list but I still managed to exit with three full grocery bags. They had a bag with a new design so I bought one and I needed it, as it turned out.

It was Sample Day. When advertising works on me, it really, really works. Yummy.

Peeling Kiwi

Posted on June 25, 2012 by treshabarger

Alert the media. I peeled my own kiwi.

Buying already-peeled fruit is one of my guilty pleasures. It costs more, but I consider it well worth it to be able to sit down and eat mushy fruit without getting my hands all, well, mushy.

But yesterday, yesterday I decided I would just try to peel the kiwi myself. This time I used a peeler. (I’d call it a potato peeler but I cook potatoes without peeling them now. It’s the kitchen utensil formerly known as a potato peeler.) Last time I used a knife and did not get the peeled results I wanted. Peeling kiwis with a knife took a lot of the fruit flesh with it.

Using a peeler, I did okay. The third kiwi gave me some trouble. The peeling part was fine, but then I tried to slice it. The center was hard and resisted my cutting efforts. I stood the kiwi on end and tried to cut it like a pineapple. And got mostly mush.

I ended up eating that one standing over the cutting board. Two out of three isn’t bad, so overall I consider it a success.

Maybe the trick is in knowing which kiwi to buy, knowing how to pick the ones with soft centers. I haven’t figured out how to do that, so that secret is safe with whoever knows it.